MS on Trial A Microsoft "enemies list" popped up during the cross-examination of witness Gordon Eubanks in the trial yesterday. Microsoft's lawyers shrugged the list off as concerning a niche product, and having been compiled by a new and inexperienced employee, but it was still another minor victory for the DoJ. The document concerned a clutch of small software companies, including Wind River, in the thin client/embedded sector. It lists them as friends, enemies or neutral, and recommended an initial blacklist of firms who were hostile, and whose technologies "Microsoft does not like to see flourishing." Wind River is an enemy because it's successful in a field Microsoft is trying to get into. Obviously the document was produced by a new and inexperienced employee - Microsoft has put some pretty dumb things down in email, but spreadsheeting a neat friends/enemies matrix isn't really the company's style, Not that that means Microsoft managers don't know who their friends and enemies are, and what to do about them. The memo suggests waiving licensing restrictions on NT source code for 13 companies, but Microsoft yesterday retorted that it hadn't been implemented, and that some of the companies on the enemies list later had the restrictions waived. ® Complete Register Trial coverage